Small, But Efficient
by lawnmowerelf
Summary: When Sam is altered during one of his and Dean's cases, it falls to another group of dogooders to help him. Crossover with Rescue Rangers
1. Chapter 1

Small, But Efficient

lawnmowerelf

Rating: PG

Pairing: none

Spoilers: none

Disclaimer: The last time I checked, my name wasn't Kripke. Therefore, I own none of this, more's the pity.

Summary: When Sam is altered during one of his and Dean's cases, it falls to another group of do-gooders to help him.

Small, But Efficient

Sam groaned as he slowly returned to consciousness. His head was pounding in time with his pulse, and it was making him slightly nauseous, though at least it wasn't the sharp, spiking pain that accompanied a vision. Then he sighed in relief when someone placed a cool, damp cloth over his still-closed eyes and at least some of the pain slowly ebbed away.

Once he could focus on something other than the pain he tried to remember just what had lead to his current circumstances, and grimaced when he couldn't. He knew that he and Dean had been investigating the disappearance of several people in a small town in New York, that they had gone to the park that people had been disappearing from, and then nothing.

"Hey, you're awake. How are you feeling?"

The voice was feminine and completely unfamiliar, which meant that it wasn't Dean. She sounded friendly, whoever she was, but in Sam's experience that didn't really mean much of anything. The friendly-sounding ones were often the most dangerous. He kept his muscles loose and ready for action, just in case, and reached up to slowly pull the damp cloth off of his face.

"It feels like I was run over by a truck. What happened, and where's Dean?"

He could almost hear her shrug. "I'm not really sure. You were just lying on the ground unconscious when Monty found you, and there wasn't anyone else anywhere around." She paused, and he felt the bed dip when she sat down next to him. "Who's Dean?"

"My brother." Sam finally forced his eyes open, trying to ignore the way the light seemed to stab directly into his brain and looked around. An instant later, he screamed. And after a quick glance down at his blanket-covered body, the scream got louder.

Instead of normal human skin, his entire body was now covered in brown fur and a strange wiggling from the general vicinity of his ass told him that he was now in possession of a short but fairly active tail. He couldn't be sure without doing a much more thorough inspection than he thought he could take at the moment, but Sam was fairly certain that he was now some sort of rodent.

His rescuer, who had jumped back in fright at his sudden scream, was a mouse. At least, Sam was pretty sure she was a mouse, even though he had never actually seen a mouse with a head full of blonde hair before, let alone one who wore coveralls and had a pair of goggles perched on top of her head.

He flinched when she started to move closer and jerked the blanket up to his chin, his breathing coming in rapid pants. He was hallucinating; that was the only answer. Closing his eyes tightly, Sam began to mutter every Latin prayer he could think of under his breath on the off chance that his hallucinations were due to some sort of demonic intervention, though he had to admit that he wasn't expecting it to do much of anything.

"Easy there. We're not going to hurt you. You're safe here, I promise."

Sam cracked his eyes open again at that, and wasn't all that surprised to see that nothing had changed. His rescuer, who was slowly approaching the bed with her hands extended, was still a mouse and he was still some sort of furry rodent with an all-too-active tail.

Dean was never going to let him live it down. Ever.

He took a deep breath, trying to figure out the best way to get to the bottom of his current predicament. "Um, this may sound a little odd, but when you found me, did I look like this?"

The mouse frowned a bit at that, but nodded. "Uh huh. Why, aren't you supposed to look like this?"

Sam had to bite back a slightly hysterical laugh. "Well, you see, before I woke up here I was human. And now I'm kind of not."

The mouse's eyes widened. "Golly, no wonder you were so panicked when you woke up. Don't worry, we'll do whatever we can to help you. After all, that's what we do."

Before Sam could say anything else another mouse walked into the room, a small housefly wearing a red t-shirt following in his wake. "Gadget, love, how's our visitor doing?" He glanced over at Sam, breaking into a wide grin. "Well, what do you know? You're awake."

"Monty, this is..." Gadget paused, then blushed. "Golly, I just realized I don't even know your name yet."

"Sam. My name's Sam."

She smiled. "Monty, this is Sam, and I think he's our next case. He says that he's supposed to be human."

Monty's head jerked back to stare at him, and Sam had to fight the urge to pull the blanket back up to his chin. "Well, now. We've seen some strange things before, Gadget, but this one takes the cheesecake."

"Um, if you can help me track down my brother he can probably help with the getting me back to human bit." Sam shrugged when both of them turned to stare at him. "Dealing with really strange things is kind of what we do."

Before they could reply to that the door burst open and two chipmunks barreled into the room, tussling and arguing. Sam simply watched them for a moment, and had to fight back a smile when Monty stuck his fingers in his mouth and let out a piercing whistle causing both fighting chipmunks to freeze in their tracks.

Gadget just shook her head at them with a disappointed frown. "Boys, now is this any way to make a good first impression on our guest? You two should be ashamed of yourselves acting this way."

Both of them ducked their heads, hands behind their backs and shoulders slumped. "Sorry, Gadget." They even apologized in unison.

She nodded with a small smile. "That's better." She gestures towards Sam, who gave the two a shaky smile and a wave. "Now, this is Sam, and we're going to help him find his brother. Sam, this is Chip and Dale."

Chip, the one in the brown bomber jacket, flashed him a competent smile that reminded Sam a bit of Dean. "Of course we'll help you find your brother, Sam. Helping people is what we do."

Dale nodded, looking rather like an excited puppy in a red Hawaiian shirt. "You betcha. We're good at finding people, too."

Sam sighed, shifting slightly on the couch and twisting the blanket. "That's good, since my brother is a people-type person, at least the last time I saw him he was." He grimaced at his apparent inability to say anything coherent. "Dean is human, like I used to be."

Chip frowned. "You used to be human? How did you manage to become a chipmunk then?"

Sam shrugged. "I'm not really sure. Dean and I came here to investigate some missing people, but I'm starting to think that maybe instead of being killed or kidnapped they might have been transformed like I was. Either way, this is the sort of thing that Dean and I do, so once we find him hopefully he can help figure out how to change me back."

Chip and Dale turned to look at each other, seemingly having an entire conversation silently before they both shrugged. Then Chip turned back to him, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his jacket. "Well, it's probably the weirdest case we've ever had, but we'll do our best to help you find your brother."

"Thanks. He's probably going crazy looking for me." Sam tried not to think about how frantic Dean probably was, wondering if something evil had snatched him or worse, killed him. And Sam tried not to wonder if Dean had tried calling their father yet, and if he had, whether John had bothered to answer this time.

And he really tried not to think about just how hard Dean was going to laugh at him when Sam finally found him again.


	2. Chapter 2

Small, But Efficient

lawnmowerelf

Gadget was determined not to let Sam go anywhere until after she was sure that he wasn't suffering any ill effects from his transformation, and since she knew more about how to tell if he was a healthy chipmunk than he did Sam let her. Even though getting a medical exam from a girl mouse made him somewhat uncomfortable, though he couldn't say if it was because she was a girl or because she was a mouse that did it.

Luckily it wasn't long before she declared that he was in perfect health for a chipmunk and he was allowed off of the couch. Unfortunately, that had its own problems as he didn't have any chipmunk-sized clothes since it had never in his wildest dreams occurred to him that he might one day need them.

Once again it was Gadget to the rescue, and in no time Sam was plucking at one of Dale's spare Hawaiian shirts and praying that the whole chipmunk thing would prove to have enough bad joke fodder for Dean that his brother might be persuaded to overlook Sam's unfortunate wardrobe issues. Somehow, he didn't think that was very likely. He was also trying his level best to ignore the fact that he wasn't wearing any pants.

"So, how do you guys get around so well? I mean, chipmunks and mice are kind of small, and people are a whole lot bigger."

Gadget grinned, taking Sam's arm and leading him outside. "Well, most of the time we use the Ranger Plane. It can take us almost anywhere we need to go."

Sam's eyes went wide when they got outside and he saw what could only be a small, rodent-sized airplane. Granted it wasn't quite as advanced as most human-built planes, it was still quite impressive. "Wow. Where on earth did you get a plane your size?"

Monty lightly slapped a blushing Gadget on the back with a big grin. "Gadget here built the Ranger Plane from scratch. She's a real whiz with mechanical stuff."

Sam smiled. "Dean would love this, so long as he didn't have to fly anywhere in it. I never said anything about it to him, but I was blown away when he built an EMF reader out of an old walkman."

"Really?" Gadget perked up, turning her attention back to Sam. "That is impressive. Maybe I can talk to him about it once we find him. There have been a couple of cases where an EMF detector would have come in handy, but I've never tried to make one before."

Sam's smile widened as Monty gave him a boost into the plane. "I'm sure that once we find him and figure out how to change me back he'd be happy to explain how he made it. I'm pretty well hopeless with anything mechanical, so even if he'd tried to tell me about making it I wouldn't have understood a word."

Chip climbed into the pilot's seat and began checking the gauges to make sure that everything was working properly. Then he looked over his shoulder at Sam who was just getting comfortable. "Sam, you should probably sit up here with me so you can lead us to where your brother might be. It's a lot easier to navigate from the front."

When Monty and Gadget both nodded at him Sam shrugged and slipped into the navigator's seat next to Chip, making sure to buckle his safety belt carefully. Dean would never let him live it down if he survived being mystically changed into a chipmunk by some unknown force only to fall out of a chipmunk-sized airplane and die.

Dale suddenly bounded into the backseat of the Ranger Plane, plopping down between Monty and Gadget. "So, where should we look first, Sam?"

"I'd say we check the motel room first. Dean has no idea what happened to me, so he's probably researching everything again and hoping for some sort of clue." Sam sighed. "He's probably going out of his mind wondering what happened to me and worrying."

Gadget reached up to pat him on the shoulder as Chip started the plane. "Don't worry, Sam. We'll find him, and everything will be all right then."

Sam sighed again, flashing her a small but sincere smile. "I hope so. I really do."

The flight on the Ranger Plane was a little bumpy but seemed to be safe enough to Sam. If nothing else it had the rather large benefit of its pilot not being possessed, which Sam really appreciated. It didn't take too long to get to the right motel room, and as soon as the suction cup landing gear attached to the window sill Sam was scrambling out of the plane and pressing his nose to the glass.

"Any sign of him, Sam?"

Sam glanced in every visible corner of the room but after a long moment was forced to shake his head. "Nothing, Gadget. He's not in there, but the Impala's still in the parking lot. He's either fairly close by, or something happened to him."

"Come on, Sam. We'll fly around the neighborhood for a bit and see if we can find him." Chip tugged on the lapels of his jacket and smiled confidently, looking even more like a chipmunk version of Dean. "And if something did happen to him, we'll do whatever we can to help."

Sam smiled slightly as he hopped back into the plane. "Thanks, Chip. I'm sure everything's fine." He tried to make it sound like he really meant it, like he really believed that something terrible hadn't happened to Dean and he was just off doing laundry or something, but he was fairly sure that the attempt fell flat.

"Dean's probably just fine."


	3. Chapter 3

Small, But Efficient

lawnmowerelf

They had been flying around for nearly an hour when they finally ran across a lead. They had almost gone right past it, only Dale's sharp eyesight managed to catch a glimpse of the sun reflecting off of something shiny lying almost completely in the gutter a few blocks from the motel.

As soon as they landed Sam was out of the plane and headed straight for it, his breath catching in his throat when he realized just what it was. Dean's silver ring was lying abandoned on the ground, and even without touching it he could tell that there was blood smeared on the metal.

"Dean was here, and something happened to him. He never takes his ring off, and with the blood..."

Gadget walked over to him and put an arm around his shoulders. "I know it doesn't look all that good on the surface, Sam. But at least we have a clue now, and we can look for more evidence and hopefully we can figure out where your brother was taken."

Chip nodded from where he was searching the mouth of the nearby alley. "Gadget's right, Sam. Besides, maybe your brother left his ring behind on purpose to help you find him."

Which made a certain amount of sense as that was certainly something Dean would do, except... "But Dean doesn't know what happened to me, so how could he expect me to find him? For all he knows, I could be dead."

"Still, there's not very much blood here at all, which means that he probably wasn't hurt very badly. Whoever took him probably just knocked him out, and the ring fell off when they were moving him." Gadget tightened her grip on Sam's shoulder for a moment. "We'll find him, Sam."

Sam nodded silently, then reached out to pick up Dean's ring and carry it back to the Ranger Plane. Then he began searching the side of the street, looking for any evidence of the car that whoever had taken Dean must have had in order to move him anywhere.

Eventually he noticed what looked like a small puddle of motor oil on the street underneath where he was fairly certain the car that took Dean had been sitting. A puddle that morphed into an oil drip that hopefully would lead them to wherever the car had ended up.

Everyone piled into the Ranger Plane and Chip took off, carefully following the oil drip until they reached an old warehouse on the outskirts of town, with a rusty van parked outside. The minute they landed Sam was scrambling for the window, pressing his nose against the glass as he frantically searched the large room for any sign of Dean.

It only took Sam a moment to find him. Dean was sitting on the floor, arms behind his back and tied to a post in the middle of the room. He was glaring at the two men on the other side of the room, looking almost like he wanted to tear into them with his bare hands.

Suddenly Chip was next to him at the window, hat pushed back so that he could get closer to the glass. "Is that your brother, Sam?"

"Yeah, that's him." Sam squinted, trying to get a better look so that he could hopefully tell whether Dean was hurt or not. "He looks seriously pissed, but I don't think he's been injured. That's his 'I really, really want to kill you' face, not his 'I'm hurt and trying really hard not to show it and I'd really like to kill you' face."

Dale bounced up on Sam's other side. "So, how are we gonna get in there and rescue him?"

"We could go in through the ceiling." Everyone turned to stare at Gadget at that. "We can use the suction cups on the Ranger Plane's landing gear to stick to the underside of the roof, and then we can just climb down the ropes to the floor."

Sam shrugged. "Okay, that'll get us in. And if someone's got a knife or something then I can work on getting Dean untied and we can take it from there." It wasn't a perfect plan by any means, but at the moment it was all he had.

And about ten minutes later he was slowly sliding down a rope that was anchored on the upside-down Ranger Plane, with Chip just below him and Dale just above him. Then he was dropping to the ground a few feet behind Dean and was finally able to pay attention to what Dean's captors were saying.

"Your brother is gone, either dead or worse. When we caught him snooping around we decided to use him as the next sacrifice, and he was accepted. The tree spirits took him, just like all the others."

Sam winced. "Well, this explains the 'I really, really want to kill you' face." He pulled the small knife that Chip had given him and carefully climbed up so that he could brace himself on the ropes binding Dean's hands while Chip and the others made their way towards the other men. "Dean, if you can hear me, twitch your fingers twice, all right?"

He felt Dean go completely still, then his fingers twitched exactly twice. Good. "Dean, I need for you to stay calm. They did use me as a sacrifice, but apparently the tree spirits, or whatever it was, decided not to kill me and just physically altered me instead. Now, I'm gonna get you untied while my new friends try to do something about those guys over there. All right?"

Dean's fingers twitched again, and Sam figured that meant that his message was received. He focused most of his attention on cutting through the rope, though he did try to keep one eye on the others' progress. And almost at the same time that he finally managed to free Dean a large tarp suddenly dropped on the kidnappers, followed by the entire contents of the nearby shelves, rendering the men unconscious.

Dean just stared at the mess for a moment before chuckling and rubbing his sore wrists. "I think I like your new friends, Sammy." Then Dean turned around, and Sam winced. "Sammy, did you realize that you're a gerbil?"

Sam groaned. "I'm a chipmunk, jerk. Gerbils have long tails, and I don't."

"You do have a really interesting looking shirt, though. I think I like it; it's...colorful." Dean grinned, reaching out to pick Sam up and looking more than a little tempted to just stick Sam in his pocket. "So, where's your new friends?"

Sam twisted around in Dean's admittedly light grip so that he could point. "Over there. Dale's the one who let me borrow one of his shirts, and Chip is the one in the bomber jacket and the fedora." Sam grinned. "He sort of reminded me of you, actually. Then there's Monty and Gadget. I think you'll like Gadget; she's the one who built the plane that we got here in."

Dean's expression was an odd mixture of appreciation for Gadget's obvious mechanical skills and stress at the very idea of flying. But he crouched down so that he was closer to their level and let Sam down. "Thanks for taking care of Sammy. And for the rescue."

Chip just smiled, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jacket. "Helping people is what we do. And it was nice to help someone else who helps people, too."

Gadget suddenly moved forward, throwing her arms around Sam and pressing a kiss to his cheek. "I know we haven't known each other for very long, but I'm gonna miss you, Sam."

"I'll miss you guys, too." His lips curled up in a small smile. "And if I ever find myself turned into a rodent again, I know just who to call."

After a final round of good-byes Dean picked Sam back up and they headed out of the warehouse, stopping by a pay phone on the way back into town just long enough to leave an anonymous tip with the cops. There had been enough personal effects from the missing people in the warehouse to tie the men to all of the disappearances, and all either of them was really concerned about now was getting Sam back to normal.

"So, Sammy. Any ideas on how to de-chipmunk you?"

Sam shrugged. "If it was a tree spirit, then the first thing to try is to go back to the park and ask it to change me back. If that doesn't work, then we do more research."

Dean didn't have a better idea, but made it quite clear to Sam that he didn't like the idea of going back to a place that had seemingly killed several other people before changing Sam into a chipmunk. It just wasn't smart.

It didn't take them all that long to reach the park and Dean headed straight for the offending tree, carefully sitting Sam down on the ground. "Well, now what?"

There was a muted flash of light, and suddenly what appeared to be some sort of dryad was standing in front of the tree, arms crossed over her chest and reddish brown hair hanging in her eyes. She looked Dean up and down with a leer, then turned her attention to Sam.

"Ahh. I was wondering if you would be returning."

Dean shoved his hands in his pockets, though Sam could tell that he was itching to reach for his gun instead. "You the one who turned Sam into a chipmunk? And can you turn him back?"

She nodded. "They wanted to give him to me as a sacrifice, wanted me to kill him. They had no idea that I couldn't."

Sam frowned. "Not that I want you to kill me or anything, but why couldn't you?"

"You are a guardian, like your brother here. You are an agent of balance, and to kill you would be to tip the scales. Dryads are neutral. We do not and cannot upset the balance."

Sam blinked at that before shoving what she had said to the back of his mind where he could think about it later. "Can you change me back into a human?"

"Yes. All I ask is that the two of you go and leave me in peace. Without someone to perform the proper ritual I can't accept any more sacrifices."

Dean was silent only for an instant. "Deal. Change Sam back and we'll be out of your hair. Promise."

The dryad snapped her fingers and when the resulting smoke cleared she was gone and Sam was human once more, wearing the clothes that he had disappeared in. He and Dean simply stared at each other for a long moment and without speaking a word they both headed back towards the motel room.

They were about half-way back before Dean spoke. "So, Sammy. How was life as a rodent? There's so much fodder for jokes here that I don't know where to start."

Sam just shook his head. It would probably take a few weeks, but eventually Dean would either run out of ammunition or something else would happen to take his mind off it. Either way, Sam would just have to endure and plan his revenge.


End file.
